Will A Stand-Alone Sports Ministry Do? By Livingstone Banga Within the coming weeks, a new cabinet is going to be announced. The sporting world which brings about a totally united nation has to take this opportunity to request for a standalone ministry of Sport. From 1980 to date, sport has co-existed with other sectors in a ministry set-up and the nation has produced fluctuating results across all sporting events. We have had a successful women’s hockey team at the 1982 Olympics and took a long dip to achieve a similar success in swimming through our own queen of the waters, Kirsty Coventry in 2004 and 2008 at the Olympics again. It took 23 years for our national men’s soccer team to qualify for their first appearance at the Africa Cup of Nations and we are still waiting patiently for the same soccer team to make a maiden appearance at the prestigious World Cup. Our Zimbabwe Cricket team quickly gained the Test status within the first 12 years of independence and became the fearful force on the World stage and that same success plunged downwards in the first decade of the 21st century. On the rugby side, the Zimbabwe Seven’s rugby team has experienced mixed results over the years. Nicknamed The Cheetahs, the rugby side won the Bowls section in Dubai in 2009 Rugby World Cup. Over to individual brilliance, the country has had the finest football stars, Peter Ndlovu, Norman Mapeza among others, the Black family in tennis, former world number one in golf, Nick Price, record three time comrades marathon winner, Stephen Muzhingi, former world number three in cricket batting and now England coach, Andy Flower among a high list of successful athletes. All the success has been achieved under a Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture. Should we say we have a reason to sit back and totally be comfortable with our success? A big NO from me. In as much as we can look back and marvel at the success we have had, we cannot relax and be content on the future especially when it comes to sport. That is the reason why as sports writers, analysts and even administrators, we appeal for a standalone Ministry of Sport in the short to medium future. Zimbabwe is number one in Africa in terms of literacy rate. This success is proving too difficult for all other African nations to surpass this record that has been brought about by a well crafted education policy that was put in place way back in 1980. We can now confidently boast of our education system 33 years later. We are not done with our quest for literacy and educational success as we are gearing to topple which ever nation is at the number one spot in the world. While we have made strides in education, our sport and culture have not been moving at par with education. The current set up is such that an academically challenged student with a chain of failures can also feel the warmth of being at a school and is given a plethora of chances to overturn the academic challenge. Yet a talented footballer or rower, yes, a rower faces a mammoth task of breaking into the limelight to showcase his talent. We have plenty of international rowers in Binga who are fishing everyday in river Zambezi, world cup winning individuals that are pressing laptops everyday in the financial sector and Olympic gold medalists’ weightlifters and rugby players that are working in our industries. I can guarantee that we have better national team players and officials who have pursued pay cheques that are certain in other sectors and the people we have right now, across sporting disciplines are the few that have taken the risk and sacrifice to pursue and perfect their talents. We can achieve a 100 percent employment of our country’s citizens through a great investment in sport, almost totally empty prisons, reduced crime rate and a total utilisation of all skills across sectors through sport. Seemingly trivial talents like dancing are unearthed. Not in the sense that dancing is trivial but we don’t have policies and structures that can make our dancing industry gigantic. Permanent success is an intentional investment not a chance. A fluctuating success rate is a result of opportunistic investment that doesn’t have a commitment. When the Blacks where enjoying success on the tennis courts, every parent had this hype of wanting her kids play tennis, when Kirsty Coventry won the swimming gold medals, most houses had high water bills because of kids swimming in the tub. The same goes when Neil Johnson, Andy Flower and Tatenda Taibu were raising the country’s flag high in cricket, most roads were turned into stumps and bats. I won’t talk about the Warriors qualification at the 2004 Africa Cup of Nations because that is a very emotional subject, especially getting to watch people across political divides dancing, singing and chanting Go Warriors Go together. The success of the Blacks family is very much credited to their parents who put out facilities and financial investment to their three children at a very tender age. We cannot postulate that Byron’s father was very bad at tennis such that he thought about letting his children play but he invested in something that would not benefit him directly but benefit the whole nation in the process. The same applies to Coventry’s parents and our three time comrades marathon winner Stephen Muzhingi who forgo boarding the bus and preferred running behind it when he was still growing up. Internationally, we love to watch Lionel Messi penetrating a steel-built defence. It is not the fact that Messi is talented. Lionel is a product of Barcelona Academy. Product in the sense that he was only a talent that was put in a football structure and produced the three-time World Footballer of The Year that we cherish now. Simple mathematics, Talent plus Structure are equal to a Product. Expanding our equation, we can say, Talent is available and structure encompasses talent identification, harnessing, talent development and talent packaging which bring about a complete product. Almost everyone in Zimbabwe is talented and the government can set up the initial structure which can motivate the corporate world to chip in and change the attitude that we have as a nation of only focusing on books only. We have a highly esteemed education which doesn’t necessarily mean that we are intelligent, although we are too intelligent, but it’s because of an attitude we have towards education when compared to sport. Sport is treated just like lotto. Although lotto is not certain and no one can bank on it, people can’t stop playing it. Very low level of commitment, but high level of participation. My mother in Karoi will prefer buying a financial calculator for me rather than a new pair of soccer boots although they have the same price. The attitude has always been investment in a risk-free sector with a guaranteed financial return. Whereas simple financial investment concepts conclude that more risk brings about more returns. Sport solely represented at national level liberates people to think long term and we can suppress the internal brain drain that is currently limiting our sporting success. The current ministry set up appears as if sport is supplementing education yet the ministry name doesn’t run as Ministry of Education supported by sport and culture. Even our curriculum appears as if we have sport from primary to high school level then at university level going forward, it’s more like no one is really having a one to one handling of our sports. Availability of funds and the government’s national priority in the short term can be of hindrance to our request but reminding our leaders who dearly love sport too can be crucial in developing our sport. Remember the President was or is still the Zimbabwe Cricket Patron, the First Lady, Tennis Zimbabwe Patron; the late Vice President Joseph Msika was the Zimbabwe Football Association Patron so it’s a matter of everyone being involved in sport. One may think that I am just advocating for success without financial rewards and recognition. Sport contributed $31,465 billion in 2010 to the gross domestic product of small countries in terms of land size like England, sport related jobs amounted to an estimate of 400 000 people which represented 2.3% of the country’s employment and annual health benefits from people taking part in sport stood at $17.36 billion in 2010; partly desert filled Australia collected over $12 billion representing 1% of GDP in the same year. In as much as we read of terrorist activities and wars in Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka, their countries’ image is always cleaned up with success on the cricket field. Small islands on the world map like Samoa Islands, Tonga and Fiji are a recognised force on the world map because of rugby. Egypt can be blackened by the ongoing protests but no one can forget their record at the Africa Cup of Nations soccer tournaments. What more of a peaceful, bigger and intelligent Zimbabwe? We already have an advantage over other successful countries. That is only possible if in the short and medium term, we create a structure that can harness the potential that we have as a nation. The success of most countries has been orchestrated mainly by having a standalone Ministry of Sport or a Ministry of Sport that is supported by a lesser responsibility like recreation. Egypt has a sole Sports Minister, India has a Minister of Youth Affairs and Sport, South Africa has Minister of Sport and Recreation, Italy had Equal Opportunities and Sports Minister among other nations. We would love to see the Minister of Sport putting on a yellow and green helmet whenever the Zimbabwe Warriors play and a white Vuvuzela when Zimbabwe Cricket plays. That is motivation on its own for our players who will be representing the country. Once a Ministry with sole or more responsibility on sport is created, sport will have guaranteed funding from the national budget, sports associations will have a closer relationship to the government, laws that can support sport can be quickly drafted, sport will cut across all ages and sectors and definitely, we will always be a successful sporting nation. Should we request for a sole Ministry of Sport? Yes we can and together we will be proud of our nation in the future. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent those of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 13:01:25 +0000
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